Sewer Quotes & Sayings

All philanthropy is only a savoury fumigation burning at the mouth of a sewer. — Ellen Key

Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer. — Charlie Munger

As we say in the sewer, if you're not prepared to go all the way, don't put your boots on in the first place. — Edward Norton

The question arises whether all lawyers are the same. This is like asking whether everything that gets into a sewer is garbage. — Florynce Kennedy

If you have read many adventure novels, you'll know that spies spend about half of their time in the sewers. They run along sewer tunnels, shooting. They find secret hideaways in sewers. They take weird funeral barges through sewers, poled along by old men in hoods. In fact, if a spy's kid wants to get a message to their mom or dad, the easiest way to do it is just to flush it down the toilet. — M T Anderson

Anything I run across can light up the circuitry of my brain, and set me on an adventure. To research strains of yeast; hiccup fetishists; the proper use of inverse, obverse, converse and reverse; the ratio of main narrative to tangent, of forward action to aside. What else do we do but quest, pursue meaning in the information wash? Where does that storm sewer opening from the river into the city's underneath go to, anyhow? I grab a headlamp and head in. It's long and low and dark and stinks and extends for miles. Underneath the city is another city. The one above begins to disappear. That's what we're after, isn't it? To disappear? To venture into darkness, to let what we know or think we know recede for an hour, a day, a novel's length, and see what meaning can be made of what remains? — Ander Monson

No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's Waterways, that belong to all the people. as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people. — Lyndon B. Johnson

When spies aren't in sewer tunnels, they're usually crawling through air ducts. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It makes you kind of wonder: Are spies just frustrated maintenance men? Is that what spies really want to be doing? Plumbing? Air conditioner repair? I fear the day that they follow their dream, lay down their laser-gun cigarette lighters, and pick up wrenches. Our country will be in great peril, though with fewer toilets backing up and more of our houses at a uniform sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. — M T Anderson

Life is like a sewer-you only get out of it what you put into it. — Barry B. Longyear

Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton. — Wilson Mizner

You talk too easily,' the Boy said.
'Talk?' Mr Prewitt said. 'I could shake the world. Let them put me in the dock if they like. I'll give them - revelation. I've sunk so deep I carry - ' he was shaken by an enormous windy self-esteem - he hiccupped twice - 'the secrets of the sewer. — Graham Greene

The sewer is the conscience of the city. — Victor Hugo

I've always made my own clothes since I was a little girl. I was a terrible sewer, but I was always cutting and customising. — Geri Halliwell

The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to go back to living in a sewer-pipe? And eating other people's garbage? Because that's what rats do. But the fact is, we aren't rats anymore. We are something Dr. Schultz has made. Something new. — Robert C. O'Brien

She wasn't there. He wouldn't have had to look too closely. She stood out from others like an angel in hell or a rose in a sewer. — Ruth Rendell

We got a right to climb out of the sewer and live like other people. We could start from scratch. Make every minute count twice for the one we lost. — Samuel Fuller

Then Peter said to Jesus, "Explain to us the parable that says people aren't defiled by what they eat." 16 "Don't you understand yet?" Jesus asked. 17 "Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. 18 But the words you speak come from the heart - that's what defiles you. 19 For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. 20 These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you. — Anonymous

What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe. — Blaise Pascal

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind. — Tim Cahill

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us. — Michael Bennett

A hygienic environment, proper waste and sewer disposal, clean water and all efforts that destroy disease-carriers like flies and mosquitoes will reduce the spread of disease and promote good health. My home challenge for a hygienic environment is that we should be responsible enough to make sure we are safe and comfortable eating apples in the toilet and bathroom! — Archibald Marwizi

The red velvet material was hard to work with, it pulled, and the style my mother had chosen was not easy either. She was not really a good sewer. She liked to make things; that is different. Whenever she could she tried to skip basting and pressing and she took no pride in the fine points of tailoring, the finishing of buttonholes and the overcasting of seams as, for instance, my aunt and my grandmother did. — Alice Munro

I know, to be useful," broke in Abel impatiently. "When I said that, I had no idea you would be leaving us so soon. I also said that I couldn't give you advice, and I say the same now. But you're leaving tomorrow and we might never see each other again. I decided that, even if I can't advise you, I can at least tell you that a life without love, a life like the one you described just now, isn't live at all, it's a dung heap, a sewer. — Jose Saramago

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle? — Blaise Pascal

Sure, 'Les Miserables' can be melodramatic. And seeing the musical instead of reading the novel will save you some time and spare you the long part where Hugo goes on and on about the Parisian sewer system. But I would hate for the novel to lose that. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there. — Johnny Depp

Wal-Mart provides a chilling example of the damage that low-wage, nonunion corporations can wreak, and their business model is going to set the standards for our children unless we do something now. Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed. — Andy Stern

The sexual map we acquire in youth includes body image, masturbatory guilt, sexual preferences and more. From what turns us on to what turns us off. From attitudes about menstruation to the right of women to wear certain clothing. But using this guilt- and shame-ridden map as a guide to sexuality is like using a map of an ancient city sewer system to locate the fiber optic network. What if the only map we had of a city was made 2,000 years ago? How useful would it be today? My city was an open prairie 2,000 years ago with no roads and maybe a few animal paths. A map of that reality would be of little use today. — Darrel Ray

Elsewhere in Italy is the lovely city of Venice, which each year attracts millions of visitors despite the fact that it is basically an enormous open sewer.. — Dave Barry

I can't work in a sewer. I come from California. — Orson Welles

Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. — Tom Lehrer

I tell you, say the rich,
the poor are naught
but dirty wind
welling in air-shafts
over the cinders
and droppings of
the past, their
voices thick
with grease
and ordure,
sewer-greed
to corrode the ear
with the horrors
of the past
and the voids
of new stupidity.
One could drown
waiting for the poor
to make
one fine distinction.
Yes, destroy us
say the rich
and you lose
the roots
of God. — Norman Mailer

There is no place so benighted and godforsaken that some moron won't go there on vacation. People could be living in an open sewer and swallowing dirt to stop the hunger, and there'd be a couple from Larchmont wearing comfortable shoes there to take pictures of them. — Thomas Perry

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly. — Charles Duhigg

Think of the millions of young men who died fighting for democracy. We spit on their graves when we let democracy slip away into the sewer of illegal money. — Doris "Granny D" Haddock

He lived in two modes, the apparent and the veiled, and in two realms, the opera and the sewer, and he shuttled between them like a genie. — Walter Kirn

The sea is the universal sewer. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Creepy as hell. You ever see that TV movie about the clown in the sewer? — Stephen King

When you have half of Caironese in slums, when you don't have clean water, when you don't have a sewer system, when you don't have electricity, and on top of that you live under one of the most repressive regimes right now ... Well, put all that together, and it's a ticking bomb. It's not of a question of threat; it is question of looking around at the present environment and making a rational prognosis. — Mohamed ElBaradei

You don't shower or shave for a month, until you smell like a sewer. Then you walk around for two weeks wearing a dress and a goalie mask with a dildo strapped to the front. That's what I did. And I will never be afraid of public humiliation again. — Neil Strauss

He's got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge. — Elvis Costello

See things for what they are. Drop your blinders and raise the sewer to eye level. Admit that your swimming in shit. If you don't acknowledge the turd heading down the drain towards you; you can't dodge it. — Karen Marie Moning

Beautiful young presidents died and beautiful young presidents lived, beautiful young women lived and then they died, but the broken sewer pipe beneath the courtyard of the old Worumbo mill was apparently eternal. — Stephen King

As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing your nose deeper into the sewer of facts. — Theo Van Gogh

I don't think drugs are a problem; I think they're a symptom. As long as Americans are empty, spiritually, emotionally, morally empty, they will need things like the drugs they choose to use. Mankind has wanted to change the way it felt from the beginning anyway. In this country there are even more reasons to want to feel different, to want to feel better, because this is such a neon sewer. This is such a degrading culture. It forces you to play Beethoven to your child in the uterus so that he will get into a better school and a better job and make more money so he can take care of you. — George Carlin

To say accounting for derivatives is Americais a sewer is an insult to sewage. — Charlie Munger

Private Zombie, you have two seconds, exactly two seconds, to seal that sewer pipe posing as a mouth, — Rick Yancey

The world is a sewer of lies. We're all up to our necks in the sweet shit of it. — Benjamin Percy

The fact that there is no such thing as a perfect anti-sepsis does not mean that one might as well do brain surgery in a sewer. — Robert Solow

New challenges beyond navigation have spawned new conventions and institutions in the Rhine and Danube basins. A separate International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) was set up in 1950 as a permanent intergovernmental body among the co-riparian states. But the ICPR began fighting pollution of the Rhine in earnest only after a 1986 accident at a Basel plant. For a long time, industrial and domestic wastewater flowed untreated into the Rhine, earning it the sobriquet, "the Sewer of Europe." The Basel accident spewed thirty tons of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and dyes into the river, turning a large stretch of it red and destroying some fish species. — Brahma Chellaney

We all jumped - a cab with its light on skidded across the lane to us, throwing up a fan of sewer-smelling water. "Watch it!" said Goldie, leaping aside as the taxi plowed to a stop - and then observing that my mother had no umbrella. "Wait," he said, starting into the lobby, to the collection of lost and forgotten umbrellas that he saved in a brass can by the fireplace and re-distributed on rainy days. "No," my mother called, fishing in her bag for her tiny candy-striped collapsible, "don't bother, Goldie, I'm all set - " Goldie sprang back to the curb and shut the taxi door after her. Then he leaned down and knocked on the window. "You have a blessed day," he said. iii. I LIKE TO THINK of myself as a perceptive person (as — Donna Tartt

All men are liars, inconstant, hollow, talkative, hypocrites, proud and cowards, contemptible and sensual; all woman are perfidious, artificial, vain, curious and depraved; the world is nothing but a bottomless sewer where the most shapeless seals crawl and wriggle on mountains of muck; but there one single thing in this world, saint and sublime, it's the union of these two beings so imperfect and dreadful. We are often deceived in love, often wounded and often miserable; but we love, and when we are on of the verge of the grave, we look back, and we say: I often suffered, I erred sometimes: but I loved. It is me who lived and not a factitious being created by my pride and my boredom. — Alfred De Musset

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it
inside, outside, above and under
just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind. — Tim Winton

Welcome, Bell said, not rising from a large wooden chair that had been placed in the center of the room like it was a throne. Would that make him the king of sewer rats? — Kalayna Price

Actually, orders coming from me usually have motherfucker attached to them. I just treated you like a tender great aunt. I'm not afraid of you, but I have respect, like I would for a twenty-three-foot alligator residing in the goddamn sewer. Nothing's killed you yet, and you've lived through a lot of shit. You want to be in my life? Then you'll have to contend with how big my balls are. Beckett sighed. — Debra Anastasia

It wasn't a lack of attraction to her husband that caused her problems. It was life. It was traffic. It was the Miami Dade Water and Sewer bills, it was trying to get ahead, and trying to be on time. Petty little thing, but zillions of them fused together. — Heather Graham

An anonymous death in a small town, that's a different thing. It makes people uneasy. They stop gossiping, talk only with trusted friends, or - realizing that nobody can truly be trusted - they don't talk at all. Instead of settling in the streets or running through the municipal sewer system, murder moves inside. It becomes internalized. It seeps around the corners of locked front doors. It creeps into people's bedrooms. It runs in their veins. — Kat Rosenfield

In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system! — Spider Robinson

Feeding plants to animals then eating the animals is like filtering water through a sewer then drinking it. — Bruce Friedrich

Within the last two years it had been called Tony's, Belle's Bar Sinister, The Ole Plantation, Tony's, Alt Wien, Paris Soir
or Sewer
Victor's Vesuvius, Chez Cocotte, York House, Gay Madrid, and Tony's. — Patrick Dennis

A lot of unemployment, though. We've got two closed factories and a rotting shopping mall that went bankrupt before it ever opened. We're not far from Kentucky, which marks the unofficial border to the South, so one sees more than enough pickup trucks decorated with stickers of Confederate flags and slogans proclaiming their brand of truck is superior to all others. Lots of country music stations, lots of jokes that contain the word "nigger." A sewer system that occasionally backs up into the streets for some unknown reason. Lots and lots of stray dogs around, many with grotesque deformities. — David Wong

Behind the cool mask of bravado, past the one-way mirror of his mind, underneath the rock-solid layers of self-control, in the Zen garden that was Master Sewer's soul, a high-pitched anxiety fart rustled through the still leaves. If farts could talk, this one would have said, Damn coppers! — Sorin Suciu

Moammar Gadhafi was found hiding in a storm sewer with a gold-plated gun. That's me in retirement, ladies and gentlemen. — David Letterman

You pompous little bitch!" the infuriated Were shouted, red-faced and with his thugs backing him. "What are you doing here?"
Mrs. Sarong pushed past the men who had put themselves in front of her. "Arranging your removal," she said, her voice sharp and her eyes glaring. Removal? As if he were an overgrown tree clogging the sewer line?
The short businessman seemed to choke on his own breath, becoming choleric. Mouth gaping to look like one of his prize fish, he struggled to respond. "Like hell you are!" he finally managed. "That's what I wanted to talk to her about!"
From my shoulder came a small, "Holy crap, Rache. How did you become Cincy's assassin of choice? — Kim Harrison

Well," I said, "you obviously have some power. You chased off those hooligans with rotten fruit. Perhaps you have banana-kinesis? Or you can control garbage? I once knew a Roman goddess, Cloacina, who presided over the city's sewer system. Perhaps you're related ... ?"
Meg pouted. I got the impression I might have said something wrong, though I couldn't imagine what. — Rick Riordan

I rarely do anything on the show by myself. I dont want it to be about me. Squatting in the sewer in San Francisco, its really hot, were up to our knees in a river of crap. Rats and cockroaches are all over. I would never, ever walk into that environment, except for the fact that the guy who does it every day is squatting next to me. — Mike Rowe

There is no such thing as Christian work. That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God.
This means that nobody is excluded from serving God. It means that no work is "beneath" a Christian. It means there is no job in the world that needs to be boring or useless. A Christian finds fulfilment not in the particular kind of work he does, but in the way in which he does it. — Elisabeth Elliot

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. — Mel Brooks

Junk is the ideal product ... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. — William S. Burroughs

Apparently the town, a triumph of post-war socialist planning was a sewer, full of tattooed beasts and violent zombies, with vomit and blood frothing in the gutters. I couldn't wait to see it. — Hanif Kureishi

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits ... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time. — Margaret Atwood

Roanoke was deep into spring - which was really pretty, even if it turned out that all the native blooms smelled like rotten meat dipped in sewer sauce (that description courtesy of Magdy, who could string together a phrase now and then). — John Scalzi

I am a good sewer. My mother taught me how to sew. — Nick Nolte

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom - that the current economic and political system is the only possible one - the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone's blueprint? It's not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called "capitalism," figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin. — David Graeber

Alec licked his spoon, then set it on the table and popped his drink open. "Okay, I may be breaking some kind of girl bonding rule or something, but can I offer you a guy's perspective on this?"
I frowned, my spoon halfway to my mouth. "Is this gonna make me want to hit you?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. But it's the truth. Here goes: kissing back is an instinct. Unless the girl smells like a sewer or has tentacles feeling you up independently, a guy's first instinct is to kiss back. That's how it works. What's important is how long that kissing back lasted. So ... how long? — Rachel Vincent

You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer. — Mark Twain

If you asked most kids, "Hey, you want to summon fire or lightning or magical makeup?" they'd think it sounded pretty cool. But those powers went along with hard stuff, like sitting in a sewer in the middle of winter, running from monsters, losing your memory, watching your friends almost get cooked, and having dreams that warned you of your own death. — Rick Riordan

We need a national infrastructure bank to rebuild our crumbling highways and water and sewer systems, thereby putting additional people back to work. — Robert Reich

One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation's sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. — Charles Duhigg

No, thanks." Rhage laughed. "I'm a good little sewer, as you know firsthand. Now who's your friend?"
"Beth Randall, this is Rhage. An associate of mine. Rhage, this is Beth, and she doesn't do movie stars, got it?"
"Loud and clear." Rhage leaned to one side, trying to see around Wrath. "Nice to meet you, Beth."
"Are you sure you don't want to go to a hospital?" she said weakly.
"Nah. This one's just messy. When you can use your large intestine as a belt loop, that's when you hit the pros. — J.R. Ward

He saw the towel in her hands. "I've got this."
"Let me help."
"I think you've helped enough." She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, "It's been worse today than usual."
"Stress is a contributing factor-when you get tired or if something emotional happens."
He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn't bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, "I've been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That's why my laundry is behind."
Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she'd hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. "My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing. — Karin Slaughter

I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is. — Nancy Farmer

I was down in the sewer with some little lover. — Bob Dylan

Note to self: When causing the sewer system of Manhattan to explode, do not stand underneath it. — Rick Riordan

As we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man. — Edward Norton

So they caught Gadhafi in a storm sewer and shot him. Or as they call it in the Middle East, an orderly transfer of power. — David Letterman

If you are drowning in a sewer, your first concern might be that you are drowning, not how vile you smell. — Geraldine Brooks

There's two kinds of dirty - dirty and sewer-dirty. Danny Ferry is sewer-dirty and has been ever since he was at Duke. — Shaquille O'Neal

There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district. — Andrew Cuomo

He'd (Yogi Berra) fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch. — Casey Stengel

I fast every Sunday. I don't eat anything. Just juices. [ ... ] It flushes out the system, cleans out the colon. I think that's great. To really make it work, you have to do it properly. That's the sewer valve of the system. You have to keep that clean like you clean the outside of your body. All these impurities come out of your system because you're not clean inside. It comes out in pimples or disease or through big pores. Toxins trying to get out of your system. People should try to keep themselves clean. — Michael Jackson

Aided by the young George Pullman, who would later make a fortune building railway cars, Chesbrough launched one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century. Building by building, Chicago was lifted by an army of men with jackscrews. As the jackscrews raised the buildings inch by inch, workmen would dig holes under the building foundations and install thick timbers to support them, while masons scrambled to build a new footing under the structure. Sewer lines were inserted beneath buildings with main lines running down the center of streets, which were then buried in landfill that had been dredged out of the Chicago River, raising the entire city almost ten feet on average. Tourists walking around downtown Chicago today regularly marvel at the engineering prowess on display in the city's spectacular skyline; what they don't realize is that the ground beneath their feet is also the product of brilliant engineering. — Steven Johnson

Wednesday is pizza day at Chadham High. The lunchroom smells like a cross between a sewer and a dead skunk. Chadham High pizza consists of a cardboard crust and sauce made of mud, topped with some kind of fungus that looks suspiciously like phlegm pretending to be cheese. — Huston Piner

Well, Mr Thomas, while I'm in favour of education, I couldn't in good conscience recommend a university career in anything but the hard sciences. As a working environment, the rest of academia is a sewer of irrationality, hate mongering, envy, and self-interest. I'm getting out the moment I earn my twenty-five-year pension package, and then I'm going to write novels ... — Dean Koontz

Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments. — Milan Kundera

I often have said that to be a college president, you need a thick skin, a good sense of humor, and nerves like sewer pipes. — Gordon Gee

Joseph Bazalgette created a sewer system which he originally sized for London's needs of the time - he then doubled it to anticipate the future beyond. These are the qualities that I admire. — Norman Foster

Life is a sewer and we are all but swimmers within it. Smart people do the backstroke. (In other words you gotta have a giggle.) — Stephen B. Pearl

TO BE "THE SEWER OF CHRISTENDOM and drain all the discords out of it" was the primary function of the Crusades, — Barbara W. Tuchman

God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel